That’s a children’s rhyme on Sarronny, which contains worlds of paradox and irony: nobody home, but that absence means nobody any good. The Void is not the enemy, but something worse. It’s utterly indifferent, and we’re the anomaly.

For ages I could make no sense of planet-side stories, until I realized that planet-siders have the luxury of ignoring their environment. The sky and earth love you in such places; you’re a part of them, or nearly so. And the colors—photosynthesis is a marvel, and if humans could do it, we would never have left the Original World, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing either.